Read The 6th of Six (The Legend of Kimraig Llu) for Free Online

Wicca confined them in the Lower Level on floors just above each building entrance. Imperfect people were good enough to act as alarms when the poison winds came again.
    This slow development made them too old to discard in the basement. Imperfect babies disappeared with the help of the Wicca cleaning squads. Ergots roamed the basements and tunnels under the city—an unknown species the size of human males that appeared as translucent blobs. They ate anything unattended.
    Instead of food for the Ergots, they became Kimraig’s harvesting teams—adults with bent children’s bodies—collecting the spores of the green and black Choker weed that blew in each night.
    With serrated knifes, they dug out each tiny root-fiber where it had forced its way into unseen cracks in the building sides. Special buckets, impervious to the spore’s caustic sap, collected the weed. When full and tightly capped, these buckets traveled the freight elevators with each SHORT’s empty material tank.
    Their destination was the mixing bins that supplied the sticky liquid fiber a LONG needed for building. The mix of harvested Choker weed, water, and chunks of rubble equaled lightweight, super strong buildings.
    Tucker and Whinny would be the last to climb back to the roof tonight. They would swing their legs over the parapet just as the sun dipped into the ocean, then back before first light the next morning. Keeping the buildings in one piece was never easy.
    Kimraig’s first experience with the Choker weed had not been pleasant.
    Three Battle groups had marched to the cliffs that day without their Queens—ten year old Troopers and Hunters-in-training. The ocean raged for their blood.
    Years ago, earthquakes triggered by a quick succession of one super volcano eruption and a series of nuclear bombs, this had abruptly forced their island up. Rock became fluid under its bed of sand, breaking Manhattan’s tenuous hold on the mainland. Sharp, endless tremors followed. Plate tectonics and continental drift sent their city crawling south along the seabed.
    Back then, the Choker weed covered just a small part of the shoreline, with only a few tendrils crawling up the almost vertical cliffs—cliffs that reached higher than he could throw his spear.
    Kimraig could not have known then, that the shambles of his city would disappear under the weed.
    Not fond memories, just an imprint of the past helping him fill the waiting time on Top Side of Number 4 Building. Around him were the Builder’s four sister structures. He watched his people preparing to pack it in for the night.
    Equipment—air conditioning of all things—once crowded the roofs. They had removed all these units from each building. Air conditioning was a memory of metal salvaged for construction projects long forgotten. The square holes under the units went deep into the building. Each lined with metal sheeting and ducts, which had carried cold air into various rooms. This sheeting salvaged in turn, the square holes sealed off, and the roof repaired.
    The salvaged material remained unusable as is. Metal shears cut them into usable sections. Most of this material went to the manufacture of material tanks for his SHORTS and the LONGS. Minor pieces of the sheeting worked well as cowls to protect the small, flex-fuel engines of both vehicles.
    Heavy struts and brackets became vehicle bumpers and frames. The subway rails were a different matter. The acetylene for torches disappeared with use, no equipment to make more. There were plenty of hacksaw blades and hand labor to cut the steel.
    In their five buildings there was one welding unit. Feeding its thirst for electricity required all the capacity from the solar units in the project area. Without solar, the building was dark, quickly losing the fresh air provided by fans. The crews hurried. Welding rods were a problem, there were not enough. Homemade rods lacked the easy flow of iron to metal. Welding was no longer an exact science. They made